Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in.  This is Thomas with another episode of the Mind Guy Podcast.  I don’t know why I feel so compelled to talk about this topic and I don’t know how many people are interested in this but I’m going to do it anyway.  These concepts I’m about to talk about are things I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about with my religious upbringing.  The Catholic Church believes that suicide is one of the gravest sin you could ever commit and through my Catholic upbringing I was taught that you will go directly to hell for eternity if you do take your own life.  

     I have to share that most of the things I talk about on this podcast are based on experiences that can’t necessarily be proven by science.  Some examples come from past life regressions while in hypnosis, psychedelics like ayahuasca, channeled works like the Law of One and Course in Miracles, other people’s stories, as well as listening to a lot of Near Death Experiences on Youtube.  I just have to chuckle because I just realized how weird I am.  I listen to NDE’s on Youtube for amusement.      

      I have for my entire life starting during middle school and maybe earlier have had suicidal ideation.  It has taken me close to 40 years to actually talk about it, because this is a topic that freaks people out.  At this point in my life I merely see suicidal ideation as a pattern of thoughts and emotions.  The source of the suicidal ideation is pain and through opening up repressed memories from my past I experienced some pretty intense trauma at a very early age of 3 or 4 and also a lot of trauma in my 20’s.  

     The worst of the suicidal thinking came when I was 29 years old when I hit rock bottom and had very little will to continue living.  The irony is that the fear and terror of my Catholic teachings completely stopped me from actually going down that path.  The fear of hell or the unknown was enough of a deterrent.  These teachings and the fear associated with these teachings kept me from taking my own life.  On the flip side though I always thought the way to win the game of life was to transcend fear, therefore I have gone down the rabbit hole on this topic and will try to explain it in a matter of minutes. 

      I was taught and raised that suicide was the most selfish act you could ever commit and bam, you don’t pass go, you go directly to hell.  Let me just say depending on which priest or holy figure you talk to in the Catholic Church there could be differences in ideology in all of this, but for me in my household this was the absolute truth.  Hell for me was always a destination that involved darkness, fire and lacking life and love.  It was barren land of rock and dirt as the terrain and of course there was the devil who reigned over this land with his loyal demons.  As soon as you arrive in hell you are tortured for the rest of eternity, which was terrifying to me as a young child and even as an adult.  So in some weird unique way these consequences of  suicide from a religious standpoint kept me here and I am grateful for that, because I went on to discover healing and growth that ended most of my suffering.  

     Now I no longer think of hell as just a destination.  I very much see hell as an experience.  If you listened to my last podcast episode on separation being the source of suffering then you will very much understand what living a life of hell on earth is like.  When you have separated from your true self, when you completely separate yourself from others and separate yourself from higher power, this is the trifecta of hell on earth.  The more disconnected you are from the Oneness of everything your internal state of being and thinking turns into extreme chaos and suffering and for me this is what I would define as hell. 

     There is a quote I’ve heard referenced before that states, “the kingdom of heaven is within you.”  Now this isn’t stated in the bible but it was a little clue that helped me to understand the premise of living either in hell or in heaven while you are here on earth. (Luke 17:21) “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”  I would say the kingdom of god and the kingdom of heaven are synonymous.  Also if you listened to my last episode you would also know that you can use a variety of different words for God, such as the universe, nature, higher power, oneness, wholeness, etc.  There is a lot of negative stigma around religion and the term God and I want to preface, this podcast does not advocate for religion.  

     I do advocate for connection and connection to the universe or to the onessess has had incredible positive benefits on my life and I do believe there is some truth in the teachings of the bible, but it’s hard to decipher.  I am more in the line of thinking with gnosticism and the German theologian from the 16th century named Martin Luther.  I don’t think you should have to worship a guy in a robe or be in some holy church to be connected to God.  You can have a relationship with your higher power wherever you choose.  This is what spirituality is to me and after stepping away from the catholic church in my early 20’s, it has been a long, careful process to develop a relationship to what many religions call God.  I often use the word Creator or Source in lieu of the word God.  

     So let’s move back on this principle of heaven and hell.  To recap from my last episode, separation and the most extreme forms of separation are going to bring states of hell into an individual's life. The more alone you feel in the world, the more you protect yourself from others and decide to do it all on your own, it’s very likely going to elicit those internal feelings of chaos and suffering.  Homeless people living on the streets can be a pretty good example of this.  Most of them have experienced trauma earlier in their life or even throughout and they have difficulty functioning and socializing in society and resort to drugs in order to alleviate the internal suffering they are experiencing.  

     There are a lot of variations when it comes to separation so let me give a few examples where even one small form of connection could alleviate suffering. There are people who can’t stand other people and choose to live the hermit life, possibly off grid and maybe they don’t believe in God, but they get their connection from nature and their daily activities, so in some way they are connected to what I would call God, even though they don’t realize it.  

    Also some people may only have one person, maybe a partner or spouse, or even a very close pet that they have a really strong connection to and that singularly provides them with enough reprieve from separation that could keep them out of hell.  So even one form of connection could prevent you from experiencing hell or creating a break from it in the least.  This is the first part of the conversation I want to talk about and the second part has to do with a question. 

     The question to ask is, “Is there an actual dimension of reality that people go to when they die, that is called hell?”  I will answer this shortly but I want to share that I do a lot of past life regression work and I always go to what I call the death scene in that past life to determine any last thoughts or decisions.  After that I have them leave their body and enter into this river of light to get a better understanding of the programming and fears that were created in that past life that is still impacting them in their current life.  After doing 100’s of these I never had a person kill themself and that was very odd to me.  I could see that the subconscious programming that I developed around suicide and hell was still present.  I felt like if only I had one example that could debunk this hypothesis of the realm of hell with a past life regression it would suffice to break up this old belief pattern.  

     Interestingly enough I ended up doing one weeks after pondering this very concept in my head.  My client in this past life was an older woman who lived a very isolated and lonely life in the woods after experiencing a lot of heart ache in her earlier years.  She was also unattractive and could not find beauty in herself.  She ended up stabbing herself in the stomach and died a slow and painful death, but yet she was sitting in front of me in a different body and was not living in hell for eternity, therefore this belief that people who kill themselves go to hell for eternity was dismantled from my subconscious mind.    

     Although there is more to all of this, all thanks to my weird obsession of listening to near death experiences on youtube, it opened the door to another concept of hell.  Just so you know, there are so many accounts of near death experiences that this is not a rare phenomenon.  I want to say something like 10% of people who die and miraculously come back to life have these weird supernatural occurrences while they are dead.  You can find some of these stories on youtube and they are fascinating.  There is one that really stood out to me.  It was an atheist who claims he experienced hell.  So at some point in his life he chose not to believe in God or a Higher Power which is very common these days and when he died he went to this really gnarly place.  

     Gnarly is not a positive description of this place.  He said it was complete darkness and he could hear beings coming towards him and eventually they were torturing him.  They were violating him verbally, sexually and physically. The man said he was experiencing the worst form of suffering and it caused immense pain.  After a period of time the suffering became so unbearable he prayed to God.  He said out loud, “God help me.”  Immediately the beings stopped because even hearing the name God terrified them.  One of the beings said, “there is no God, don’t ever say that word again.”  But once again, the man called out, “Help me God.”  This time the man could hear the beings scatter away, leaving him alone and shortly thereafter the man was removed from that dark realm and brought to the interlife.  

       He never used the word interlife, but that’s the word I use for where he went.  The interlife is something I learned about at the Hypnotherapy Academy and it’s the place your soul goes to in between lives.  It’s a really nice place where time doesn’t exist and you feel no suffering at all.  You are like this energy of light and you feel immense peace.  

       Let’s talk about this Near Death Experience because this was the only verbal or written account of a place called Hell that I’ve ever come across, besides for catholic mass.  I don’t believe it was a physical place.  This to me was one of two places.  It could have been another dimension of reality, like maybe in a soul plane of existence. S-O-U-L.  The second idea is psychological, just like our dream state, where this man was taught a lesson about God that he could bring back and teach others about.   

     Does every single atheist or person who denounces God go to this place?  I have no idea, maybe, but this story gives me a better understanding of this game.  There is something that created all of this and is in charge of all of this and the game is all about forgetting who or what we are, which creates an experience of suffering and separation, which could very much lead us so far into a place of disconnection that we denounce God altogether and that brings us to hell either while we are alive or when we die.  The beautiful thing is that it doesn’t take much to get out of that hell according to my own personal journey in this life and this near death experience I’ve shared.  Just acknowledging God or asking God for help is enough to pull you out of that hell.  Anytime my suffering got to be too much I would cry out for help to God and for me it was a temporary relief from that suffering.  

     If we go even deeper to this concept of Oneness.  The entire universe is God, therefore I am God, you are God, every inanimate object, every person, sentient being, you name it is an aspect of God.   Even though I say there are three levels of separation, if you are God and everyone is God, then there is really only one level of separation to deal with.  If you can develop and discover a relationship with God aka Source, Universe, Higher Power, Spirit, Nature or even Love, it will pull you away from hell and closer to heaven.  Which is all the blissed out states of joy, peace, love, compassion, gratitude, etc. This podcast episode which I summarized into maybe 15 minutes, I have spent thousands of hours thinking about these concepts, because I’m a seeker and I am looking for answers.  

     I’ve experienced hell on earth and I had no idea how I got there and it took me an ayahuasca ceremony that opened me up to sexual abuse at the age of 3 or 4.  A trauma that caused me not to trust others.  It was also an experience of immense hurt, which led me to hurt others and I can see a progression of cutting out people, hating myself, and eventually in my early 20’s cutting God out of my life.  The reason I ended up hitting bottom at 29 was because of how disconnected I was to myself, to others and that higher power.  Alcoholism was just a way to numb myself from the suffering.  It just got worse and worse overtime and after I cut out the last person that I felt connected to, my ex-fiance, that’s when I felt all alone in the world. I felt like I had no one and that leads to the experience of hell on earth.   

     Connection is the antidote to suffering.  Since you and I are just aspects of God, then ultimately the only form of connection we truly need is that Connection to Higher Power.  It took me a very long time to discover this and I had to discover it for myself.  There is no way I could accept this kind of information even if it was served to me on a silver platter.  Each and everyone of us is in this game of life and it’s the hardest game you will ever play.  You end up in these situations not having a damn clue how you got into them and now you have to figure out how to get out of them.  Ask the universe for help and some guidance because that’s part of the game.  We are so powerful but that disconnection steals our power away from us.  You are capable of so much if only you could believe in yourself in that manner.  

     Now I don’t want to end it there because I feel like I just opened the door to allowing people to take their own lives which is a major component to all of this.  For starters if you do take your own life and you have denounced God then maybe you will go to that really dark place where these so-called demons exist, but the positive is that it seems like as soon as you recognize God or ask God for help, even for a moment that will be enough to pull you out of that terrifying place. 

     For those of you who are in hell and you feel all alone and super disconnected, know that if you take your own life then you will have to deal with that karma.  Meaning you will likely end up in the same place in the next life and that’s where I encourage you to not take your own life because you can’t escape your own karma.  I can as an alternative give you advice on what to do based on my experience.  It’s a path towards healing and learning.  Become a seeker and make your life a game and find a way to win this game.  I was in hell and I was able to get out of that hell.  I believe anyone can get out of that situation.  Is it going to be easy?  No, but you chose to come to this place on the hardest goddamn level, now it’s time to figure out how to really play the game. 

     It starts with a decision.  The decision I made was to figure out the game of life.  That’s all you need as a starting point, is to make a decision to figure out how to become an expert at this game. I encourage you to do some past life regression work or psychedelics if you are over the age of 25 so that you can get connected to your real self which is not the physical body, but rather an eternal, never able to perish, soul or spirit.  

     Once that door is open and once you get connected to your own spirituality then you have a real fighting chance.  It will be an upward battle because you likely will have to heal a lot of trauma.  I encourage therapy, support groups, and learning how your mind works.  I’d love to have you in one of my NLP, Timeline Therapy and Hypnosis training sessions so that you can teach yourself how to reprogram your mind and let go of the things in the past that are causing your suffering.  I still experience suffering and I am on a journey of finding that kingdom of heaven within me and teaching other people how to do the same.  I believe it’s possible and I want to inspire hope for those people who are in hell and feeling hopeless.  If I can do it, so can you and this episode found you because you asked for help and this very well might be the starting point.  Just a little bit of hope can go a long way.  Love you all, take care and be kinder to each other.